What are your values? How about your financial values? Are they queer? Or just, you know, sensible?

I’ve been thinking a lot, during these sleepless nights of new parenthood, about all the values I want to transmit to my daughter. I know she’ll eventually forge her own’”hopefully not in diametrical opposition to mine!’”but I hope I’ll at least give her a solid foundation on which to build her own ideological home. (I’m also in the process of moving, so forgive all the house metaphors.)

As I jotted down some of my financial values, it occurred to me that many of these are informed by my experiences, identity, and ethics as a queer person. Others seem more universal. So here’s my highly opinionated, completely non-objective, utterly personal list of Fink Family Financial Values. What about your financial values? Are they ‘˜queered’ in some way by your experiences or values as an LGBTQ person?

1) Create and maintain financial independence.

Sweetie, here’s the scoop: don’t rely on a partner, a parent (ahem), or any other external source. Don’t debt. ‘œCompound interest is the most powerful force in the universe,’ said Albert Einstein. Indeedy.

It’s difficult to maintain self-determination if you are dependent, in debt, or in denial about your finances. As a queer woman, I think it’s especially important to model independence and self-determination for my daughter. I see women’”queer and straight’”so often victimized by their learned helplessness and economic dependence. As a queer, however, I do feel like I’ve got a bit of critical distance from those tired old gender roles that create such profound inequality, and ultimately harm people of all genders.

Financial independence, I will tell my daughter, is different from wealth. I want my daughter to pursue her passions, regardless of whether or not they lead to the big bucks. Of course some professions pay much better than others, but with planning, one can maintain financial independence regardless of one’s income. I’ve known solvent, happy, financially independent performance artists, and investment bankers who are well into their second bankruptcy, third foreclosure, and fourth round of camping on their parents’ couch.

2) Money is a tool for social change. So use it to change the world, one carefully spent buck at a time.

In our capitalistic society, we do indeed vote with our dollars. So I try to support only those companies whose ethics align with mine. Fair wages, non-discrimination policies, and concern for their environmental impact top my list. I’m sure yours is slightly different, and I’ll bet my daughter’s will be, too. I neither expect nor want my kid to have the exact same ethics and politics as I do; that would make for boring dinner conversations. I do hope that she understands that her money is a powerful force, and that she should try to use it in a mindful, positive fashion. Again, I think being queer has something to do with my attitudes about this; I started by scrutinizing corporate policies regarding LGBTQ folks (is anyone out there old enough to remember the Coors boycott?), and this led me to look at other issues, and to use my bucks as a consumer for what I perceive as the common good.

3) Money is silly.

No, that’s not a typo; I am writing’”on a personal finance blog, no less’”that money is silly. Think about it: coins of metal, little pieces of green paper, plastic cards: that’s all it is!

When I was a kid, I used to play with my dad’s poker pennies, giving each penny a name, job, and tragic story. Romances between older and younger coins were all too common. Coins seemed so magical, talismanic, mysterious. What the hell is money, anyway? It stands in for all of our ideas about value, exchange, and power. Money is the ultimate metaphor, a true abstraction.

And yet, as those of us who have ever skipped a mortgage payment know, it’s also really’¦.real. It has this odd force precisely because its value is representational. A dollar is worth something not because the paper it’s printed on is actually worth a dollar, but because of its exchange value, its ability to purchase a dollar’s worth of whatever.

As a writer, I love the force of metaphor, the power of abstraction to create meaning and value. As a queer, I bring a camp, playful sensibility to the whole enterprise. I hope my daughter not only understands the grave importance of fiscal responsibility, but the playful, absurd, and wonderfully human quality of money. And I have a sack of coins from all around the world for her to play with.

Okay, so that’s my list. What’s yours?